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I was wondering what "come out" may mean in the following context.

The Oscar race is heating up and all the hot stars came out to sizzle.

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This is a play on words. The context is the Oscars (prizes for film/movie actors, producers, etc). Famous and popular actors are called 'stars'. Real stars are the little lights you see in the sky at night. When it gets dark, and the stars start to appear, we say that they 'come out'. So the sentence is saying that because of the forthcoming Oscar awards, lots of movie stars are making themselves visible in the media. Also, they are looking striking and attractive ('hot' - food sizzles in a hot pan).

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come out:

to come into public view : make a public appearance

There's nothing particularly metaphorical or context-dependent about the use of come out - the stars are simply making public appearances.

The sizzling is just an extension of the heat metaphor in the sentence - the race is heating up and the stars are hot, so the writer describes them doing something (literally) hot things typically do.

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  • But stars come out at night.
    – Michael Harvey
    Nov 24, 2021 at 20:52
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    @MichaelHarvey So do people :) It might have been an intentional wordplay, but it might as well just have been a coincidence.
    – Maciej Stachowski
    Nov 24, 2021 at 20:59

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